Leading Protestants, Catholics and Jews of Washington last night joined in a united attack on bigotry, intolerance and attempts to divide the Nation into warring factions over so-called religious and racial issues, at a public initiation of 82 candidates into Argo Lodge, Independent Order B’nai B’rith, in the presence of priminent officers of the Masonic Fraternity and the Knights of Columbus.
The ceremony was held in the Temple of the Washington Hebrew Congregation. Gentile and Jew sat together, prayed together, and applauded together the denunciations of bigotry as un-American and the calls for a wider and truer application of the principles of tolerance proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The principal speakers were: the Rt. Rev. James E. Freeman, Episcopal Bishop of Washington; Roc Fulkerson, Deputy Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Masons; James A. Sullivan, State Deputy, Knights of Columbus; Leo A. Rover, Past State Deputy, Knights of Columbus; Henry A. Alexander of Atlanta, Ga., President of the District Grand Lodge, B’nai B’rith; M. D. Rosenberg, Washington Representative of National B’nai B’rith Organization; Dr. Abraham Simmon, Rabbi of the Eighth Street Temple; and Cuno H. Rudolph, Chairman, Board of Commissioners, representing the City Government. In extending to the Lodge Officers and Candidates and their guests the Greeting of the Board of Commissioners of the District, Mr. Rudolph Referred to the ceremony as “unique in the history of the Capital”, and predicted for it “far-reaching results” in wiping out intolerance.
Mr. Rosenberg, officially greeting the gathering on behalf of the National Organization, emphasized the non-sectarian work of B’nai B’rith, pointing to two striking examples: the Leo N. Levi Memorial Hospital of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where seventy per cent of the patients treated during the past year were Gentiles; as his second example he cited the large financial contribution of the Order to the flood sufferers of the Middle West.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
